Skin Cancer Claims Solicitors

This form of cancer negligence claim will often start with a GP or other healthcare professional mistaking the differences between a regular mole and either a Basal Cell Carcinoma (BCC) or a Malignant Melanoma (MM). As noted earlier, BCCs are typically not life-threatening, while MMs can prove fatal if not caught early enough.

A GP or another medical professional should be able to identify red flags of skin cancer, as they are well-known and often apparent. A cancerous mole or lump will often be:

• Bleeding or painful
• Itching
• Changing colour
• Growing in size
• Irregularly shaped

These risk factors are typically recognised by a GP and the patient is referred to a dermatologist for further investigation. From there, the dermatologist can refer the patient for a biopsy to confirm the diagnosis and start treatment.

Sadly, there are instances where these red flags are either overlooked or believed to be a harmless, benign mole or lesion by a healthcare professional. If this happens and you are diagnosed with skin cancer at a later date, you could have grounds to make a medical negligence claim.

Examples of negligent acts that may be grounds for a successful skin cancer claim include:

• Failure to perform a proper examination
• Not taking all signs or symptoms into account, such as a mole being itchy
• Misinterpreting a mole or lesion as benign or evidence of another skin condition
• Failure to refer a patient to a dermatologist, plastic surgeon or another specialist
• Ordering the wrong test where the cancer would not be visible
• A biopsy taken from the wrong location, or not taking enough of a sample
• Results of a test or scan being misinterpreted or misreported
• Failure to communicate the results of tests or scans with the patient
• Misdiagnosis of the stage or type of cancer leading to ineffective treatment

If any of the above results in a delay that changes your treatment options or prognosis for skin cancer, you could be entitled to medical misdiagnosis compensation.

To determine whether a healthcare professional breached their duty of care towards you leading to a skin cancer claim, we will work with an impartial medical expert in the same role as the professional accused of the breach of duty.

By outlining the evidence of the case to these professionals, they will inform us what steps should have been taken based on your condition at the time of your diagnosis. This helps us paint a picture of how you should have been treated and the steps that would have followed, which we can compare to what happened.

It is important to note that a skin cancer misdiagnosis claim can only be brought if the delay affects the treatment options or prognosis. For example, if you were misdiagnosed by your GP, but then saw another healthcare professional a week later who referred you, this delay may not have been significant enough to change anything, meaning there is nothing to claim for.

Also, a misdiagnosis or delay in diagnosis may not be grounds for a claim if there was reasonable cause to pursue other diagnoses before this. This could be because the symptoms were more likely to be another condition, or the need to rule out conditions that present a more urgent concern to someone’s health.

It can sometimes be difficult to determine who is responsible for a skin cancer misdiagnosis. Working with independent healthcare professionals, including specialist oncologists, we will establish when it is most likely that a cancer progressed from one stage to another, resulting in a change to the treatment options and prognosis.

In medical negligence claims causation is judged on the Balance of Probabilities – whether something was more likely than not to be the case. Therefore, an expert will provide an opinion on when it is most likely that your skin cancer progressed to a later stage.

For this reason, we may look to establish the causation of your injuries before investigating whether the duty of care was breached. This is helpful because:

• It helps us identify which healthcare professionals could and could not have made a difference with an earlier diagnosis, ensuring that no time is wasted pursuing irrelevant defendants
• It informs us whether your condition could have been treated sooner and had a better outcome

The compensation awarded following a successful skin cancer claim is designed to help return you to the position you would have been in had you been diagnosed and treated at the right time. Or, when this is not possible, provide financial support for the changes made to your life moving forward.

In these types of claims, compensation is often used to cover the costs of:

• Loss of earnings caused by more severe and extensive treatments
• Private medical treatments, such as chemotherapy, radiotherapy, surgery, etc.
• Any necessary equipment or aids
• Therapies for psychological support

Sadly, a delay in diagnosing melanoma cancer could greatly affect someone’s life expectancy, causing them to pass away earlier than if the condition had been diagnosed sooner. In these instances, it is possible for beneficiaries of the claimant’s estate and those who were dependent on services provided by the claimant to continue to pursue their claim.

While no amount of compensation can reduce the loss of a loved one, it can help ease the financial burden on their dependents, and support their lives beyond this tragedy. Learn more about making a claim following the death of a loved one.